


Kyoutani Kentarou Is Not His Father's Son

by knightswatch



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: (This all sounds v heavy but I swear there's some good soft stuff too), Animal Death, Bbac-Verse, Blood, Character Death, Child Abuse, Human!Kyoutani, Inugami!Yahaba, M/M, character injury, dragon slaying
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-26
Updated: 2016-03-26
Packaged: 2018-05-29 03:17:58
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,754
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6356770
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/knightswatch/pseuds/knightswatch
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's a bad idea to begin with. Kentarou knows it, somewhere deep in the pit of his stomach. It's a foolish plan that leaves the taste of black magic lingering in the back of his throat. </p>
<p>It's a bad idea to begin with, but when it goes wrong it goes <i>spectacularly</i> wrong.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Kyoutani Kentarou Is Not His Father's Son

**Author's Note:**

  * For [skittidyne](https://archiveofourown.org/users/skittidyne/gifts).
  * Inspired by [bell, book, and candle](https://archiveofourown.org/works/3766450) by [skittidyne](https://archiveofourown.org/users/skittidyne/pseuds/skittidyne). 



> Skitty wrote up a bunch of headcanons for bbac kyouhaba [here](http://skittidyne.tumblr.com/post/141404342202) and because kyouhaba is my brand, I decided to write out a few of them!

"we swallow   
our most tender  
secrets

we love like  
carnivores,

by the neck."

—Pavana पवन

* * *

 

It's a bad idea to begin with. Kentarou knows it, somewhere deep in the pit of his stomach. It's a foolish plan that leaves the taste of black magic lingering in the back of his throat. He can hear the wild, desperate whimpering of the dog every night when he tries to sleep, buried in the yard, left to starve until it's time for the next step.

And Kentarou is young, too young for his voice to matter when he begs his father to stop, to let the animal go. He's too young to do anything but cover his head with a pillow and muffle his own crying that way too. There are consequences for speaking up, to talking back or being too loud at night.

He's a coward. He's too scared of the dark to go out and dig it up himself. It's an ingrained fear, from too many nights trapped in closets with no lights, huddled into the smallest space he can make for himself, waiting for a light to hit his face again. He's too scared, and somewhere in the pit of his stomach, he knows what happens is his fault too.

It's a bad idea to begin with, but when it goes wrong it goes _spectacularly_ wrong.

The spirit they create is a fierce, sharp-eyed thing that lurks in the shadows of the house for days in the shape of a massive, hulking wolf that could probably kill a bear. It snarls whenever Kentarou gets within ten feet and stares at his father with the sick rage of a trapped animal.

“Ain't right,” he huffs, sitting at the table and staring at the spirit with a frown across his face. “Supposed to be a servant, right? I guess I'll have to see if it can follow orders.”

He stands, digging in the half-empty fridge for a moment before pulling out a thawed steak and dangling it from one hand, raising both eyebrows when the spirit freezes and stares at the meat. They haven't fed it, but Kentarou isn't sure if it can starve anymore. The thought makes his insides hurt and he wants to slink off and hide again.

“I've got a name, you go and take care of this man, you get to eat,” he stuffs the meat back in the fridge and holds out a scrap of paper instead. The spirit stares at him with eyes far too bright, too sharp to belong to an animal. There's a _pop_ and instead of a huge beast, there's a naked man lurking in the corner of their kitchen instead.

There's a bizarrely perfect array of soft brown hair on his head, and his eyes are still trained on them both with a pair of ears on his head and a tail curled around his hip. Kentarou would have imagined a spirit to look older, but this one seems young, with his ribs standing out at sharp angles against the constraint of his skin. He leans forward, snatching the paper with a sneer on his face. “Is that all? Do you want me to fetch you the paper too?”

Kentarou flinches a beat before the slap actually hits the spirit's face. It's an instinctive inward curling of his shoulders, a sympathetic response.

The spirit looks _shocked_ , mouth parted slightly open, lifting one hand to touch the stinging red of his cheek. Kentarou sinks further into his seat, the electricity of the moment sinks into his bones, making his whole body shiver with tension. The spirit recovers after a moment, and there's another _pop_ before a much smaller dog sits on the floor, shaking his whole body once before vanishing into empty space.

 

* * *

When the spirit returns, Kentarou's father drops the steak onto a scored plate and sets it on the counter with a snort. There isn't a word of praise or even the acknowledgment that anything was done. The spirit stares at him as he simply leaves the room, and doesn't seem to notice Kentarou with his homework spread out on the kitchen table.

Strangely, he elects to eat in the same human form as before, tail twitching behind him, apparently not at all bothered by his own nakedness. He rips into the steak with his teeth, tearing off a large chunk before looking over at Kentarou with blood running down the side of his face. There's a small bruise on the swell of his cheek, something Kentarou knows far too much about. He pushes himself back from the table and digs in the freezer until he finds a bag of frozen vegetables, passing it to the spirit with a shrug.

The spirit just stares at him and Kentarou grunts. “Put it on your face. Helps with swelling and shit.”

After a moment the spirit nods and takes it, pressing the bag to his face and raising both eyebrows in Kentarou's direction. “Are you hoping I won't eat you next?”

He punctuates the suggestion by tearing another chunk of steak off with his teeth. Blood runs in a single trail down his arm and he ducks his head to lick that clean too. Kentarou rolls his eyes because he's fairly sure the spirit isn't going to eat him. He's also fairly sure that a hunk of cow isn't really going to satisfy him at all, but he keeps his mouth shut on that front.

“Kentarou,” he says instead, so quietly a careless ear might miss it. The spirit stares at him, setting the meat down and licking his lips clean of blood, grin peeling back over sharp teeth.

“You're not bright, are you?” He laughs, and Kentarou shrugs once more. The spirit is contracted to his family, to his blood as well as his father's. It means something, even if Kentarou isn't entirely sure what. When he doesn't balk the spirit tilts his head, considering.

“Yahaba,” he responds, making no effort to say if it's a first name or a last name or simply a title. Kentarou figures it doesn't really matter anyway.

 

* * *

Kentarou learns to hunt because that's what the family has always done. Yahaba makes a habit of disposing of whatever body is leftover, usually with his teeth and Kentarou feels slightly more ill than he expects to.

At least, this time, he doesn't devour it as a human.

It's better though than watching him slowly starve on a diet of raw meat he wasn't meant to eat to begin with. He's still thin, to the point that people raise their eyebrows at Kentarou on the rare times he takes Yahaba out for a walk in his more normal dog form, the quiet wondering of why he hasn't fed his dog more.

Yahaba lifts his snout out of the beast in front of him, licking blood off of his snout and staring at Kentarou, seated maybe a dozen feet away, head tilting to the side. “What are you sulking about?”

“Not sulking,” he frowns, hunching slightly further into himself in a way that's only _slightly_ reminiscent of sulking. Yahaba makes the weird coughing sound that equates to laughter for him. Kentarou sighs, leaning his arms on his knees, head tilted to rest on his own shoulder. “I sent some applications out to schools.”

“I recall,” Yahaba answers before rolling the phooka over with a foot, burying his snout into the open wound on its chest again, digging deeper inside for meat. Kentarou looks away, taking a slow breath to steady his stomach. Watching Yahaba eat _anything_ is gross, but when he starts digging for organs Kentarou usually walks away.

“I should be hearing back soon,” he's not excited about it, not exactly. There's a cold space of dread inside the pit of his stomach but he can't say for sure what it is that he's dreading. Yahaba lifts his head again, heart clenched between his teeth, staring at Kentarou before setting it down and sitting back on his haunches.

“Are you leaving?” His voice is tense and there's a little furrow in his fur. Kentarou shrugs.

“If I get in,” he might not. His grades are good, but he's not great with tests and it's hard to say. He hasn't started thinking about the money yet either. Yahaba snorts, plucking the heart off the ground and laying on his belly to eat it.

Kentarou expects to be scolded or snapped at for thinking about it, for making real plans to get away when Yahaba doesn't have an option like that. But Yahaba just stares at him while he eats, gaze heavy and considering. It's unnerving, but Kentarou does his best to ignore the spirit's weird behaviors like he always does. They've had time to get used to each other at least.

 

He lets Yahaba pluck a few more choice pieces off the phooka before they leave, sighing when he finally shifts back into human form, pulling a hat over his head when Kentarou hands it to him and wiping the blood away from his mouth, licking the blood off of his fingers with a little hum.

It seems like the spirit is happy, or as happy as he ever is, and Kentarou doesn't have to wonder why. They've been left to their own devices for almost a week, and outside of schoolwork and hunting, things have been almost peaceful.

Expecting _that_ to last was foolish on Kentarou's part, really.

Yahaba hesitates for a second when Kentarou's hand rests on the outside knob of the front door, nostrils flaring with a single inhale. Kentarou raises an eyebrow, questioning, but Yahaba just shakes his head with a little sigh in response. “Well, welcome home I guess.”

Kentarou rolls his eyes before pushing the door open. There's no reason for it to be a problem—things are clean, the job is done, he didn't drag Yahaba home covered in blood. Things are alright, there's no reason for them not to be.

Except the first thing that catches his attention is the torn open envelope sitting in the center of the old kitchen table. His name is printed bright and clear on the front of it, along with the logo of the veterinary college he's been dreaming of for months.

And maybe it would be a good sign, except his father is seated in one of the crappy plastic chairs, staring at him, letter spread out between his hands. Kentarou freezes, teeth digging the skin on the inside of his cheek, listening to Yahaba swing the door closed behind him.

“Well,” he says, holding the letter up with one eyebrow inching upwards. “Do I say congratulations?”

He rips the paper in half before Kentarou has actually come up with an answer. Kentarou watches the two halves flutter apart in silence. It's not a mark of stubbornness but it feels like something has coiled itself around his windpipe, choked off his ability to say anything at all. Fear—of course it's fear. He resists the urge to scrabble his hands at his neck like he could tear it out from under his skin and tries instead to clear his throat. “I'm not—”

There's a sick sense of disorientation, when he's standing in the middle of the room and looking at his father seated at the table one moment and the next he's backing into the wall, and instead of looking at his father he's looking at the knife in the man's hand.

“You're not _what_?” He's forced to stop retreating when his back hits the wall, left with nowhere else to go. The room seems much smaller like this, without escape, with a man and a knife bearing down on him until the steel is pressing against his throat and he's breathing in shallow pants to try and avoid the touch of it. “You can leave right now, if you'd like.”

He can't leave. He can't run away, he's pinned to the spot and trying to pull air into his lungs before blackness swoops up from the floor to swallow him. He can't think—there's too much fear, too much panic and he's drowning in it.

“I asked you a _question_ ,” the slide of his voice is as smooth and insidious as the slight twist of the blade that makes it nick against Kentarou's throat. “Answer me.”

Kentarou opens his mouth and finds himself unable to make anything at all come out. The sound, if he manages any, gets lost in the growing snarling sound that starts from the back of the kitchen and only grows louder until it's vibrating its way down to Kentarou's bones.

He knows Yahaba's true shape, he's seen it before—a chestnut brown wolf that's bigger than a bear, with two tails that whip and twine together. He's almost too big to move inside the house, especially with the speed that sends the table crashing against the far wall and slams the bulk of his body into Kentarou's father. Taken by surprise, he's sent sprawling in a heap with the knife clattering a few feet away from his hand.

Yahaba has never done this before. He slinks away at the first sign of trouble between the two of them and returns later to help Kentarou lick his wounds.

It's not normal for Yahaba to be crashing through the kitchen with an aura of rage and magic around him so cloying that it makes Kentarou feel sick. He presses both paws down onto Kentarou's father's chest, and there's the slow crunch and give of bone under pressure followed by pained shouting.

The sound doesn't last for long before it's drowned out as well in Yahaba's snarling. He leans forward, bearing more of his weight downward before his jaws open at an angle that seems unnatural and clamp down around his throat, cutting the sound off with a gurgle.

Yahaba doesn't stop, doesn't release his jaws until there's blood bubbling around his teeth and leaking out onto the tiles of the floor.

In the sudden quiet, the breath that rattles into Kentarou's lungs feels deafening. He forces his legs to move, away from the wall, toward Yahaba, wiping the blood away from his neck and burying his fingers in Yahaba's fur. “Stop.”

Predictably, Yahaba does not listen. Kentarou groans, moving until he can kneel down in front of Yahaba instead, ignoring the empty eyes staring at the ceiling the best he can and putting his hands on either side of Yahaba's jaw instead. The spirit snarls when he does, whipping his head up and away, nose wrinkling to reveal bloodied teeth. Kentarou doesn't cringe back from it, reaching forward instead.

Yahaba's teeth sink into his wrist until the bones of it crack. Kentarou grits his teeth and presses his head against Yahaba's, eyes closed, petting his other hand over his fur, rubbing his ear, making his motions slow and measured.

“It's over—it's okay now, calm down,” his voice is rough, shaking as he speaks, but he repeats like a mantra. Yahaba calms slowly, releasing Kentarou's arm from between his teeth with a sound like a whine, head ducking to lick at the wound on his neck instead.

It's a long time before either of them moves.

 

* * *

The hardest part for the two of them, it turns out, is _talking_. There are things that are simple—blood to clean up, people to call and make explanations or excuses to, a body that Yahaba gets rid of, Kentarou's wrist gets splinted and disinfected.

But they don't talk about any of it. Kentarou starts to feel the weight of the contract within a day, and while it's not surprising he's not sure what to do about it. He doesn't want to be in control of Yahaba, he's not even sure that Yahaba wants to be around him at all.

The first time he wakes up from a nightmare to find Yahaba staring down at him, he almost headbutts the spirit out of surprise. Yahaba is human, blinking down at him with soft eyes and perked ears. He frowns with Kentarou's eyes open, weight balanced on his palms. “Are you okay?”

“Fine,” he grumbles, feeling the tips of his ears heat up at the intense stare he's met with. Yahaba hums, lifting one hand to grab Kentarou's wrist (the good one), putting it on the back of his head. It takes a moment for Kentarou to understand, but he shifts his fingers through Yahaba's hair until they meet with one of his ears, scratching the back of it lightly.

He'd complain about it being weird, but Yahaba's ears are soft and petting him when he's human like this is interesting. There's a pleased, relaxed expression on his face, and he leans his head into the touch of Kentarou's fingers. It takes him a moment to feel the slight disturbance in the air and he cranes his head to the side to watch Yahaba's tail wag back and forth, grinning at it just slightly.

Yahaba frowns, growling just a little down at him. “I don't have to be nice.”

“It's cute,” Kentarou shoots back, stifling a laugh when Yahaba huffs and rolls to the side so his back is against Kentarou's side instead. He doesn't climb off the bed, just lays there, even when Kentarou shifts to pet his ear again.

Yahaba doesn't complain this time, even when Kentarou grins at the swaying of his tail.

 

* * *

“I can't believe a rage spirit is such a wimp,” Kentarou huffs, digging in the medical kit spread out on his lap. Yahaba growls at him in return for it but Kentarou doesn't lift his head at the sound. He does glance up to frown slightly at him. “You're gonna have to take your shirt off.”

“Take care of yourself first,” he hisses, leaning back and wrinkling his nose like having Kentarou so close to him is offensive. “You _reek_ of blood.”

“Not exactly my fault, is it?” Yahaba's not wrong, but Kentarou isn't really looking forward to stitching his own arm up so it's easier to make Yahaba his focus for the moment. “Shirt off.”

“I can lick my own wounds,” he sighs, pulling it over his head anyway. His side isn't hurt _badly_ , at least not enough for Kentarou to worry about doing more than gauze and bandages for it. Yahaba's built a far cry sturdier than most things—he'll heal find as long as he's kept in one piece.

He looks down to dig out enough gauze to cover the pair of slashes from where the dragon managed to catch Yahaba with claws, frowning. He can feel the spirit staring at the slowly leaking cut on his right arm, and his ankle is throbbing from twisting it, and he's not in the mood to deal with Yahaba being a pain. “Just hold still.”

Yahaba growls as soon as he presses a pad of gauze to his side to try and clean some of the blood away, and this time, frustrated, Kentarou simply snarls back at him. “ _Hold still._ ”

His hand gets batted away, and Yahaba nods at his arm with a frown. “That first.”

Kentarou huffs picks up more gauze, and, this time, digs his teeth into Yahaba's bare shoulder before he starts pressing it to his side. It's not a gentle bite, and Yahaba hisses at the sting of it, nose wrinkling while he bares his teeth. He wiggles when Kentarou reaches for bandages to wrap around his chest and he bites the side of Yahaba's neck instead, huffing against his skin.

As soon as he leans back to check that everything is wrapped properly, Yahaba leans forward and kisses him, mouth already open, nipping at Kentarou's lower lip until he does the same. It's not the same giddy, glad-to-be-alive kissing that sometimes follows the both of them having a bad day. They're both frustrated, annoyed, and apparently this is just one more way they've found to argue. They bite, lick into each other's mouths, and Kentarou hisses slightly at Yahaba's nails raking down his back.

He leans back after a moment, wiping his mouth off on his shoulder and rolling his eyes at Yahaba licking his lips and staring at him with bright eyes. Sex and extended blood loss aren't a good mix, and he settles for digging a suturing kit out of his things instead.

Yahaba's nose wrinkles, watching Kentarou tear an alcohol wipe open with his teeth and start to clean off his arm. “Can't you get someone _else_ to do that?”

“Don't need to,” Kentarou shrugs, focusing on threading the needle. Being a vet doesn't make him a qualified doctor, but the principal of stitches is still pretty much entirely the same.

(It does not change the fact that it hurts like hell, which is more likely Yahaba's concern.)

“Call Oikawa and tell him I'll have his shit ready tomorrow,” he sighs, because having Yahaba _watch_ him do this is uncomfortable. Yahaba blinks, opens his mouth like he wants to say something, then simply nods and digs Kentarou's phone out of his pocket before stalking out of the cave with a shake of his head.

He grits his teeth and gets through the stitches as quickly as he can before wrapping a bandage around his own arm. He frowns slightly at it, flexing his wrist to check that nothing else is hurt. He's not looking forward to the next several days of Yahaba staring at the bandage with that little edge of guilt he has every time Kentarou gets hurt.

Yahaba wanders back in after a moment, staring at the hulking dragon corpse with a grin. Kentarou doesn't miss the way his eyes hit the bandage on his arm before darting away, but he doesn't say anything about it either. “How much of that do I get to eat?”

“You ate like two days ago. Don't be greedy,” he sighs, closing the kit and tossing it on top of his bag before pushing himself up to his feet, stretching his arms over his head. He can feel bruises starting to throb on his back already. He leans over to grab Yahaba's shirt and toss it back to him only to hesitate, stepping to his side to hand it back instead. He presses a kiss to Yahaba's cheek, fingers brushing just barely at his side before falling away again.

All the bickering and faked bravado aside, Kentarou figures they both find ways to lick each other's wounds.


End file.
